Labornet Japan is a network of citizens, unionists, activists, scholars and others from all walks of life to share information especially about rights and struggles in and outside of Japan. Established in 2001, the group now has more than 500 members, and the membership is growing. The English site introduces some reports shared on Labornet Japan website and other sources outside of Japan.

Monday, March 21, 2016

2,000 workers of Honda Motorcycle and
Scooter India (HMSI) have been in dispute at its Tapukara Plant, Rajasthan
since February 16, 2016. When contract
workers of the painting section finished their morning shift, they declined
their manager’s order to work overtime as they had to work overtime for three consecutive
days and did not feel well. Then, they were hit by their manager. Many workers
at the plant who witnessed the violence got angry, sat in at the plant, and
stopped the production. At the same time, they demanded through their union a
negotiation with the management for the reinstatement of nine union activists
and 400 contract workers who were fired or suspended, as well as an apology for
the violence. The management evicted leaders of the workers and sent the police
force and the unlawful mafia to the plant, rather than accepting the
negotiation. The workers were tear-gassed and hit by sticks and stones, leaving
60 to 70 injured. (TONO Haruhi)

March 11 of this year is the fifth
anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the disaster of the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Our struggle against the pro-nuke Abe
administration and the nuclear mafia never ends. On March 9, the Otsu District
Court in Shiga Prefecture, near Kyoto, ordered that the Takahama Nuclear Power
Plant be stopped, and this decision encouraged the protest in front of the
Office of the Prime Minister and the Parliament with even bigger voice of
protest. The area was full of protesters. According to the organizer, the
number of the participants was 6,000. In front of the Prime Minister’s Office,
a woman on a wheelchair criticized Prime Minister Abe, saying, “On March 9, PM
Abe enjoyed dinner with a director of Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Japan Economic
Journal), and he did the same with WATANABE Tsuneo, the chairperson of Yomiuri
Shimbun, Japan’s most widely circulated newspaper, ten times last year. Thus,
Abe makes the media avoid writing anything unfavorable for him”. The struggle
of Japanese people against nukes is also against power and money mongers who do
not care about the future and for our survival. (KINOSHITA Masaaki)

Various trade unions and people are
campaigning for raising the minimum wage to 1,500 yen (13 US dollars) per hour.
The ratio of non-regular workers is approximately 40% of the whole workforce,
and it is said that the number of the working poor whose annual income is less
than 2 million yen (17,000 US dollars) is 12 million. It is time to end such a
situation that “it is impossible to live decently even by working regularly”.
To solve this problem, it is necessary to raise the minimum wage. The slogan of
the campaign is: “For the minimum wage of 1,500 yen per hour – Now we demand
1,000 yen per hour anywhere”. On March 9, 2016, the guests for LaborNet TV were
JIMBU Akai, an activist involved in the issue of youth poverty, and two
plaintiffs in Kanagawa Prefecture, next to Tokyo, who filed an action for a
minimum wage of 1,000 yen per hour or higher.In the program, an urgent topic “Liberalization of the electricity
market: Which shall we choose?” was discussed about how to say goodbye to
electricity generated by nuclear power. (LabotNet TV Project)